AAPT too comfortable for Sean

• NEWS
• 28 Dec, 2005 08:23:00 PM

AAPT too comfortable for Sean

Ironically, the weather conditions this year were probably better suited to the old downwind rocket ship than in any of the years that Langman raced her.

AAPT, the former line honours winning (racing as Nicorette in 2004) 27 metre boat raced by Sean Langman this year has finished 5th across the line, reaching Hobart with the most visible damage on any boat so far – a broken boom.

“Last evening we decided to go wide,” said Langman.

“We were already in front of Konica Minolta and were catching Skandia so we decided to get a chute on and go really hard.

“We ended up twenty miles further out to sea and Skandia was doing 14s and we were doing 20s so we were looking okay. 

“We did a safe gybe and decided to put the spinnaker back up and just as we did the boom exploded.

“We left the mainsail up despite the broken boom until we got to Tasman Island.  We couldn’t work out how to get it down. 

“In the end it was either it would take itself off or get it off so we turned head to wind, got it down and struggled with a tri-sail and small jib from there on.”

It sounds like a very Sean Langman moment.  He and his crew are more commonly associated with his “skiff on steroids”, the Open 66 they have sailed so successfully in recent years with their go-for-broke, never-die-wondering attitude.  She is also called AAPT and this year raced to Hobart under charter by a Tasmanian skipper under the name Coogans Stores.

Ironically, the weather conditions this year were probably better suited to the old downwind rocket ship than in any of the years that Langman raced her.  The Open 66 is the sort of rough and ready flier that will always break her crew before she breaks herself, while the bigger maxi AAPT, with her electronic winches and canting keel, is an altogether more sophisticated if somewhat more brittle beast. You arm-wrestle the big skiff to Hobart, constantly grinding the winches to catch waves.  On the maxi the sails come in and out with the press of a button. 

“It’s very dry and comfortable,” Langman observed at Constitution Dock.

“I went to the bow a few times - never got wet there either.

“We had a dry navigation station so we could see what was going on.  It’s good having the technology but I must say I do prefer sailing where you feel like you have been out there challenging the whole thing.

“I normally lose weight on these things but I think I’ve put on four kilos and I’m ready to go out because I’ve slept a lot.”

So while everybody else is wrapped in the new technology, and the fact that ocean racing rather than the America's Cup is where the big advances in yacht design are happening these days, Langman seems less than impressed.

Let’s face it, once a skiffy always a skiffy.